I hope someone will sue the ever-loving shit out of Apple when their foot dragging prevents a critical update from going out in time to prevent a 0-day from being widely exploited.
The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
151–160 of 354 posts
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#152With Signal, the biggest issue we have is that review times are extremely inconsistent. Sometimes it's 4 hours, sometimes it's 5 days, and there's no visibility as to why. Our working theory is that there's automated and manual queues, and occasionally, for whatever reason, we fall into the manual queue. But when you work on an app that has weekly updates, randomly getting hit with a review time of several days reall…
I can imagine Apple probably has an automated review of a diff, and probably makes a manual review anytime a system API call changes
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#153I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play. It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them. Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them. Luckily, the whole thing blew up on me before I got…
What did you do with all the Google Play Credits?
When you "spend" Google Play Credits in an app, Google Play treats those credits the same as if you paid with real money: they took 30% (their take isn't so steep today), I took 10%, and then I sent the user/buyer the remaining 60% directly from my bank account (I used Dwolla back then).
It was risky because I didn't actually receive any money from Google until about a month later.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can get your agent of choice to run up the app in an emulator and navigate the whole thing taking screenshots then tasks like edge-to-edge can be pretty hands off. The way I did it was to firstly get accessibility identifiers on everything. Then have it record everything I do on an emulator to navigate the entire app. Then left it for a while to work out how to actually use the app via the emulator. Once you h…
We use Roborazzi[0], which is an excellent screenshot library, but: * We target minSdk 24 * We're still using XML views * We target a large variety of form factors * We have a lot of screens, and these have a lot of configuration options. I really wish it was "point an agent at it, and walk away", but many screens ended up being hours of iteration with Fable driving my phone/an emulator to produce an acceptable outco…
Gotta love that Google enforces rules on developers that it won’t even enforce on itself. Such a great look.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a tangential issue. 1. don't force auto-updates 2. still review apps uploaded to Google Play, but don't force users to use Google Play If the concern is what if users use an alternate source for apps and those have viruses, then.... okay. If the user wants to stay with strictly Google-vetted apps, they can. If desired, you could have an option on setup that users could choose to select that would put the devic…
> If the concern is what if users use an alternate source for apps and those have viruses, then.... okay. If the user wants to stay with strictly Google-vetted apps, they can. If desired, you could have an option on setup that users could choose to select that would put the device in a restricted mode that can only use apps installed from Google Play. So this doesn't solve the issue pointed in the OP. > don't force a…
>So this doesn't solve the issue pointed in the OP.
Yes it does. This is their point:
> The fact that we cannot download and install software from the internet onto our phones JUST like we can do with our computers is a symbol of our inept and ineffective politicians.
It should be as easy for me to use an alternate storefront - or download directly from a site - straight to my phone. The googleplay store, which is (somewhat) curated and (generally) "safer" can also exist. I, as a user, get to decide which path I want to take. This is literally no different from my desktop and laptop, we already live this life. MacOS allows me to download .dmg files and install (though they are admittedly getting increasingly annoying/friction-y about it) at my own risk. Why should my phone be any different? It’s a small computer. That’s it.
It’s about user choice. It’s my hardware, so I can do with it what I want so long as I’m not using it to inflict harm on others.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
And what should we do about apps' getting hacked, sending out malicious updates that get auto-updated and thereby infecting tens of millions or billions of phones simultaneously? I'm not saying we have the perfect system but anything that slants the system towards "easier downloads" or "less gatekeeping" brings large, obvious risks. I don't see how regulation would address them.
How about treating people like adults for a start? How about starting public awareness campaigns about proper digital hygiene. Not everything has to be nanny state garbage.
20 years of being tech support for countless family members and acquaintances says that nothing can possibly make people care about "digital hygiene". An iPad, Chromebook, or similar inflexible device is perfect for most people, and marketing more flexible devices to them has been a mistake since the beginning.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#157I just released a game [1] on both iOS and Android.
The Google Play process is more thorough. There are a lot of steps and you need to clear them one by one. This means waiting several days between each step. The Play Console dashboard is quite well documented to be honest but can be overwhelming. The main obstacle is that you need to find at least 12 testers to play your game for 2 weeks straight. I ended up paying a service to test my app.
On iOS, the process is a bit more obscure. It's fairly easy to submit an app, but then you don't really know what's happening. You can only see a status like "Pending review". And then one day, you are approved.
Overall, the iOS process felt easier for me. As long as your build succeeds and you provide the correct information, your game can be live within a week. The Android process took more than a month in total.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how casually you're dropping this incredible piece of internet lore as if somebody asked you how's the weather.
Haha. I used to have some blog posts detailing things a bit more, but I let it die when Heroku cancelled their original free tier years ago.
If you're inspired to rehash it here or another blog you'll have at least this additional reader.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
At some point computers need to stop being treated as magical boxes that no reasonable person can learn how to use safely. We expect people who use cars to learn how to use them safely, we expect people who use lawnmowers to not stick their fingers in them. Computers have been a part of daily life for normies for decades at this point, it's infantilizing to suggest that average, non-tech savvy people can't learn to u…
Using a computer wrong doesn't kill people.
Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speed is money. Yes people wait for 9 months for having a baby, doesn't mean you should wait 9 months for an app release. That is not a sound logic.
Yes, but one week to wait for your app is nothing to complain about.
You should want higher speed and quality of service from your vendors. In this case, apple is paid wonderfully for it.